Giving a hoot about Canadian music

Review – “S/T” – Weather Control

reviewed by Michael Thomas

Under his previous work as Cocagne Chimera and his own name, Shawn James Morgan, the blog has already succinctly described his music and Nick Drake and Mac DeMarco getting high at party. As Weather Control, Morgan continues to put out some quality psych-folk.

The self-titled record feels like it was recorded in the 60s and not stored 100% perfectly, so when you dust off the vinyl you hear a bit of warping. The warped quality of everything makes this record even cooler. Not every twang of the guitar sounds completely right, and it’ll honestly just make you question reality more than anything.

The seven songs are roughly split between instrumentals and songs with vocals, both dreamlike in their own way. “It’s a dream (when you say that you’re okay)” takes that idea quite literally. Morgan dreams of “A place where I can lay my head/Not to worry about the dead,” but it’s just that—a dream.

He sings of someone getting high on “On the Moon,” and it’s exactly the kind of 60s psych-folk song you might expect to back a song with that subject matter. Haziness drifts in and out of “The love song (of your eyes),” perhaps the most Mac DeMarco-y song on the album.

The instrumentals all have arcs you will not even remotely expect. “Heat” packs warm guitar chords over subtle drums, and on its own the chords are hypnotic. But if you listen, you can hear the hum of hot static in the background. “Into the Fire” is another excellent psych-jam, but what puts this song right over the top is a part played on the recorder, complete with one instance of a missed note (Morgan did include “comedy” as one of his Bandcamp tags). “Poet’s blues” switches gears several times, starting with filtered guitar before switching to acoustic finger-picking.

No song on this album even reaches the three-minute mark, but collectively they’ll sync with your psyche in no time.